Ajit Singh of Marwar

ruler of Jodhpur, whom durgAdAsa brought to power, who restored temples destroyed by Awrangzeb, took back the daughter he had given to the moghul.

  • jaya-simha 2 “Sawai” [wiki] of amber
    • raised to serve mogol emperors but later took wings,
    • who like akaNNa and madaNNa conspired with the marATha-s to reduce Islamic power.
    • tried in vain to constrain jaT and marATha rise with a partial rAjaputra alliance.
    • whose force of 50,000 soldiers who were all well-educated, was the most modern army in the whole of India
    • brought a stop to extravagantly lavish weddings, female infanticide, etc. through strict orders
    • who built jantar mantar, patronized scholarship and even conducted an ashvamedha.
    • removed the jizya tax that was levied on tirthayatras and at tirthakshetras forever (When Bahadur Shah offered him a reward of two crores, he declined it and instead asked for an order for a permanent removal of the tax!)
    • had rest houses and Dharmashalas built at Mathura, Brindavan, Kashi, Gaya, Pune, Kabul, Lahore, Agra, Delhi, Chitrakoot, Ayodhya, Haridwar, Ujjain, and other sacred spots
    • had Euclid’s “Elements of Geometry” translated into Sanskrit as also several works on trigonometry, and Napier’s work on the construction and use of logarithms
    • “at some point he ceased issuing bilingual, i.e., Rajasthani and Persian, deeds and by 1712 was using only a form of Dhundari, the local dialect of Rajasthani, for such documents (Horstmann 1999a, 49).”
    • “He had also stopped using the Persian calendar, using instead the Vikram dating system.”
    • “In 1716, he ceased paying tribute to the emperor on his official seal, a tradition that went back many generations, and began to pay tribute to his own father, Bishan Singh. Later, in 1727, the seal was dedicated to the deity Sri Sitaramji.”
    • “On a more personal note, he refrained from formally or publicly using the title “Mirza Raja”, which had been conferred in 1712 by both Jahandar Shah and Farrukhsiyar. Perhaps he simply preferred the title “Sawai”"